Encrypting Text using DESCryptoServiceProvider

While creating a User Account form on your website, you probably need to store users information like username, email address and password in your database.If you are storing user passwords in unencrypted form then if someone compromises your database they have access to the passwords for every user.
I am writing some code snippet that will do the encrypting for you, using DESCryptoServiceProvider, you can find this object under System.Security.Cryptography.

'Encrypt the text
Public Shared Function EncryptText(ByVal strText As String) As String
Return Encrypt(strText, "&%#@?,:*")
End Function

'Decrypt the text
Public Shared Function DecryptText(ByVal strText As String) As String
Return Decrypt(strText, "&%#@?,:*")
End Function

'The function used to encrypt the text
Private Shared Function Encrypt(ByVal strText As String, ByVal strEncrKey As String) As String
Dim byKey() As Byte = {}
Dim IV() As Byte = {&H12, &H34, &H56, &H78, &H90, &HAB, &HCD, &HEF}
Try
byKey = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(Left(strEncrKey, 8))
Dim des As New DESCryptoServiceProvider
Dim inputByteArray() As Byte = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(strText)
Dim ms As New MemoryStream
Dim cs As New CryptoStream(ms, des.CreateEncryptor(byKey, IV),CryptoStreamMode.Write)
cs.Write(inputByteArray, 0, inputByteArray.Length)
cs.FlushFinalBlock()
Return Convert.ToBase64String(ms.ToArray())
Catch ex As Exception
Return ex.Message
End Try
End Function

'The function used to decrypt the text

Private Shared Function Decrypt(ByVal strText As String, ByVal sDecrKey As String) As String
Dim byKey() As Byte = {}
Dim IV() As Byte = {&H12, &H34, &H56, &H78, &H90, &HAB, &HCD, &HEF}
Dim inputByteArray(strText.Length) As Byte
Try
byKey = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(Left(sDecrKey, 8))
Dim des As New DESCryptoServiceProvider
inputByteArray = Convert.FromBase64String(strText)
Dim ms As New MemoryStream
Dim cs As New CryptoStream(ms, des.CreateDecryptor(byKey, IV), CryptoStreamMode.Write)
cs.Write(inputByteArray, 0, inputByteArray.Length)
cs.FlushFinalBlock()
Dim encoding As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8
Return encoding.GetString(ms.ToArray())

Catch ex As Exception
Return ex.Message
End Try
End Function